"I can hear beautifully." Indeed, a woe-begone and God-forgotten croak has been audible for some minutes, rendering patter-songs. Bob warms to his subject: "Isn't it awfully jolly? You're really sure you can hear, though? I say, though, isn't it a pity? I got 'Movement in A flat,' and I might have had 'The White-Eyed Musical Kaffir,' and it's such rot. Harmood says she's sure it's only music--like pianos." "Why don't you open it and see?" "Because then they won't change it. I might have changed it when I was out, if I'd known. But I thought it was a row in a house, and furniture getting broke, don't you know?" He gives further particulars of his misapprehension, but it will be as clear as it needs to be without them. "Where did you go when you were out?" Mrs. Eldridge seems strangely unconcerned about the phonograph. But Bob is too high in the seventh heaven about it to conceive it possible that such indifference should exist. He takes his hearer's sympathy for granted, and as for suspecting any non-phonographic motives in his questioner--impossible! "Putney. I could have gone to the shop twice over in the time I was waiting." "What were you waiting for?" "Typewriter. For the governor. Oh--quite half an hour!" "What a shame! And you wasted all that time waiting. But you got what you went for? I mean your father got his type-writing?" "No fear!" This with scorn. Then, to keep the heaven of veracity spotless: "_He_ didn't get it, you know. I shoved it in her envelope, and shoved it in the pillar-box in High Street. Not the one near the tobacconist's." "Whose envelope?" "It was all right. There wasn't any other. Judith's. I say--are you quite sure you can hear up here? Hadn't I better bring it up, while you have tea?" For tea is coming of its own accord, audibly, outside the door. "No--after tea. I shall listen better. Whose letter did you say you put in? Judith's--who's Judith?" "Oh--_you_ know! Me and Cat always call her Judith. Miss _Ark_royd." There is a trace of contempt, quite unexplained, in the accent on the first syllable. But Bob will be lenient, adding, "But she gave me my skates." Then, for he cannot honestly conceal a defect, "She's duchessy, for all that. A hundred-and-one, Grosvenor Square, W." And leaves her, classified.